The use of sample additives in flame emission spectrometry

New kinds of sample additives were investigated to increase the efficiencies of desolvation and atomization in flame spectrometry. Hydrazine and nigrosin were chosen as chemical and dye additives, respectively; an enhancement in the flame-emission signal was obtained in both cases. With nigrosin, it was possible to eliminate completely the interference of phosphate on a calcium emission signal. The increase in the signal for both additives was believed initially to be due to the more rapid evaporation of droplets in the sample aerosol. Further evidence, however, suggested that enhanced vaporization is responsible for the observed signal increase. It is suggested that similar sample additives might be useful also in inductively-coupled plasma emission spectrometry.     

On the classification of geometric codes by polynomial functions

It is shown how to represent algebraically all functions that have a zero sum on all -dimensional subspaces ofPG(n,q) or ofAG(n,q). In this way one can calculate the dimensions of related codes, or one can represent interesting sets of points by functions.     

Multi-element trace analysis of tungsten

Investigations carried out in order to determine traces of 25 elements in tungsten in the lower g/g range are reported on. Atomic absorption spectrometry and plasma atomic emission spectrometry as well as solution photometry and activation analysis were the main techniques used.     

Preparation of VPS and PVD coatings for metallographic and TEM investigations

The aim of the first part of the paper is to give some advice for the faultless metallographic preparation of vacuum plasma sprayed coatings. Several coating/substrate combinations using metals, alloys and ceramics were investigated to derive some general rules. The second part deals with a preparation technique for cross-sections- of physical vapour deposition coatings. This technique was optimized for TiN and Ti(C, N) coatings on hardmetals which were examined in an analytical transmission electron microscope.     

Dopant-modulated pair interaction in cuprate superconductors

A comparison of recent experimental STM data with single-impurity and many-impurity Bogoliubov-de Gennes calculations strongly suggests that random out-of-plane dopant atoms in cuprates modulate the pair interaction locally. This type of disorder is crucial to understanding the nanoscale electronic inhomogeneity observed in BSCCO-2212, and can reproduce observed correlations between the positions of impurity atoms and various aspects of the local density of states such as the gap magnitude and the height of the coherence peaks. Our results imply that each dopant atom modulates the pair interaction on a length scale of order one lattice constant.     

Observability of quantum phase fluctuations in cuprate superconductors

We study the order parameter phase fluctuation effects in cuprate superconductors near T = 0, using a quasi-two-dimensional d-wave BCS model. An effective phason theory is obtained which is used to estimate the strength of the fluctuations, the fluctuation correction to the in-plane penetration depth, and the pair-field susceptibility. We find that, while the phase fluctuation effects are difficult to observe in the renormalization of the superfluid phase stiffness, they may be observed in a pair tunneling experiment which measures the pair-field susceptibility.